Former federal agent pleads guilty to stealing bitcoins

He stole more than $700,000 (£448,000) in the digital currency Bitcoin. In a San Francisco federal court, Force appeared in an orange jump suit and leg shackles and acknowledged a litany of criminal acts.

Silk Road operated for more than two years until it was shut down, generating more than $214 million in sales of drugs and other illicit goods using bitcoins, prosecutors said. Force played a prominent role, communicating with Ulbricht while posing as a drug dealer named “Nob”, prosecutors said.

Assistant attorney general Leslie R. Caldwell said Force had “crossed the line from enforcing the law to breaking it”, adding Force, who worked as Nob and French Maid from a laptop in a spare bedroom of his family home, was “seduced by the perceived anonymity of virtual currency and the dark web”.

Among them, Force said he agreed to a contract with Twenty-First Century Fox Inc past year to help make a movie about the Silk Road investigation, without the permission of his supervisors.

Shaun W. Bridges, 32, of Laurel, Maryland, a ex- Special Agent with the USA Secret Service, is charged in a two-count information with money laundering and obstruction of justice related to his diversion of over $800,000 in digital currency that he gained control over as part of the Silk Road investigation.

Force faces a maximum 20 years in prison when sentenced in October.

Force, without telling his superiors at the DEA, adopted the alias “French Maid” to extort and negotiate with Ulbricht, selling information about the government’s investigation in exchange for a payment of $100,000 in bitcoins, according to the plea agreement. Force told his employers at the DEA but failed to mention the payment, which went into Force’s personal account.

Force pleaded guilty before USA District Judge Richard Seeborg of the Northern District of California.

A ex- United States federal agent pleaded guilty to stealing Bitcoins while working undercover in the Silk Road case. Force also invested in a company that brokered the digital currency bitcoin and served as the firm’s chief compliance officer while still with the DEA.

Among the revelations from the probe into Force and Bridges: An Internet libertarian who wasn’t Ross Ulbricht became a prime suspect for a while because he used terms investigators associated with Dread Pirate Roberts.

Force was a key source in Wired’s Silk Road cover story published in April 2015, which concludes by describing Force’s own arrest.

In his capacity as a DEA agent, but without authority or a legal basis to do so, he directed CoinMKT to freeze $337,000 in assets that he subsequently transferred to a personal account, according to the release.